In spite of periodic whispers that publication is immanent, it's now been something like 4 1/2 years since they finished collecting data. Dr Montoya presented his results at the 6th International Conference on HHV-6 & 7, in June 2008. Presumably he's been trying to get the study published since late 2007 or early 2008. That's more than 4 years.

We all know that researchers have difficulty getting ME/CFS articles published in peer-reviewed journals, but Dr Montoya managed to get his preliminary ME/CFS Valcyte study published in a much shorter period, and the RCT should (logically) be a much easier study to get published.

A manuscript has finally been completed and submitted for peer review. The initial (6 month) results for the trial appeared mediocre at best. The environment at Stanford was not good for the project. Kogelnik left but Montoya stayed on board. Eventually, it was discovered on follow up data that patients who were in the treatment group continued to get better over time, at one year and 18 months after taking the six months of Valcyte, even though there was almost no difference between the groups after the first six months. It took the team a great deal of time to put all this long term data together and do statistical analyses. Now, the chronic fatigue project at Stanford is getting more support again. Publication of the findings is a matter of time.

The slow patient response is exactly what would be expected, based on Dr Lerner's public comments of his extensive experience with antivirals, but I hadn't realised how this issue had delayed completion/submission of the Stanford study's manuscript.

Dr Montoya said on 8th October 2011 that he had 3 manuscripts, including the RCT study, that had been submitted for publication. So the RCT manuscript's been in the system for at least 6 months now - probably longer, given that he also expressed his frustration at how slow and difficult it is to get the ME/CFS articles published.